Categories: Movie and Series Reviews, Movie and Series Rating 1.5/5

It is hard to imagine that Cold Comes the Night coincided with the conclusion of Breaking Bad. One had Bryan Cranston giving a career defining closeout performance for one of the most well regarded shows, while the other is Cold Comes the Night. I swear it is almost incomprehensible how these are the same two people. I guess all the good juice got squeezed for Breaking Bad, because Cranston is the weakest link in the cast here.

I would not give the lions share of blame to the actors though. Direction for the movie is very off. The script also does no favors, but execution is the death of it. You can see it in how Alice Eve has a couple of scenes that are obviously in need of another go, while the rest is fine. There is a garage scene and someone is the lookout for Cranston’s Togo, and it may be some of the worst line delivery. Those kind of problems extend to the whole film. Some scenes actually work well and then others are so obviously bad that they felt unguided.

I learned that during the making of Cold Comes the Night, Cranston made a short film, Writers Block by Brandon Polanco, with some of the movie crew during bad weather. Honestly, if you just want some Cranston then watch that. It is very much an art piece, so it will not be for everyone, but it is 12 minutes of Cranston being the best part of something. That is a world I prefer.

I cannot be bothered to do more than a list with this one.

-Tuesday Knight is a big downgrade from Patricia Arquette as Kristen Parker from the prior film.
-Wasted the prior cast. They should have just moved on or focused on the actual returning actors.
-A step back in acting.
-It feels super reductive to go back to the mother undermining things again.
-Lazy work. No room rotation when you expect it and unsmooth jumps in camera work throughout.
-Some really bad deaths, very lazy.
-Revisiting the doubt from everyone is lame and makes no sense after characters acknowledge they know the story, like it is more common knowledge that odd stuff happened.
-Passing powers is stupid.
-Our man, Fred, is not very scary here.
-Wounds don’t manifest in the real world. They established in the last movie that they did, its why Fred had to make it look like some of them were hurting themselves before. It is a lazy way to perpetuate everyones doubt this time.
-The Dream Master stuff is dumb and heavy handed.
-The dojo stuff. Why invisible? Why does it only reflect the kids personality and not also Fred’s? This was so dumb.
-“Daydream” scene is dumb. I would have accepted micronapping.

Blah, I say. Blah.

Glass is so impatient with its characters that it feels detached from Unbreakable and Split. The camera jumps around, dialogue is fast and sometimes feels weak, and McAvoy is a delight to see again but even his multiple characters are shown very little patience of time.

Some strings are also pulled way too tight to get all of these characters together again, some not making sense as they are portrayed.

Shyamalan is not always balanced in his casting and direction of said casts either, and this is no exception as there are uneven performances.

Shyamalan also, once again, falls victim to having cool ideas and hamfisting his way to their execution. Ultimately it does what it always does, cool moments mixed with nonsensical ones and an overall feeling of “if only he had done a better.” The characters deserved so much better.

The acting is whatever, the fights are whatever, and the characters are unlikable (or worse, uninteresting) and nothing balances that out. The movie doesn’t even have the stones to commit to a proper ending from all the build up. Gosh, I really dislike this movie.

There are a lot of neat parts here but it just doesn’t come together well, and I think that falls very heavily on the direction and the script.

Everything else ranges from serviceable to good. I am not a big JLo listener/watcher but I think I could see people wrongly putting it on her shoulders because her face is all over it. None of the actors felt like they were slacking off and the fx house did some neat work.